Woodberry Down

CLT case study for UK housebuilder

Location

Status

Client

Budget

RIBA workstages

Share

In collaboration with Hackney Council and leading house builder, Berkeley Homes, we played a key role in setting the environmental agenda for the complete overhaul of one of the largest housing estate developments in Britain.

The Woodberry Down estate spans a total of 64 acres, next to 42 acres of open water, the New River and West and East Reservoirs, in Manor House. The process of demolishing 1,980 homes and rebuilding over 5,500 is scheduled across eight phases over a period of 20 years.

Approach

Our brief was to redesign a five-storey tower for CLT for the second phase of the masterplan. As the first CLT scheme on site, our objective was to create an exemplar project to encourage adoption of CLT construction in both the coming phases of the regeneration, and throughout Berkeley Home’s development portfolio - one of the UK’s five largest housebuilders.

Result

Executing the tower, comprising of 19 apartments, in five weeks, we far exceeded the client’s expectations in terms of speed and efficiency, as well as in terms of site conditions and ease of construction. We hope it will be a forerunner for widespread timber towers across Woodberry Down and other major new housing developments.